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When I started doing Free Immersion dives shortly before Vertical Blue 2008 I knew I was going to need a deeper gauge to read below 100m. Suunto stepped up to the plate, and altered one of their D4's - the new model that has replaced the D3 as specialised gauge for freediving.
There has already been talk about its sharp design and quality materials, but what impressed me most with the D4 was its functionality: accurate, intuitive programming, and attention to details, including:
- The buttons are easy to find, and, compared to most dive computers on the market, very easy to depress.
- To enter dive mode takes just a single button press, and to turn dive mode off (so necessary for when you are safetying and need the stopwatch, or spearing/playing in shallow water and don't want to clog up the dive log) is just two clicks.
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- There is a 'depth notify' as well as an alarm, and both are very audible, so for those who need to mouthfill at exactly 38.5m, you won't miss it again! A surface interval alarm makes it easy to set recovery times for training tables.
- The D4 comes with a clear plastic sticker which can be applied to the screen (like an ipod) to protect from scratches. Big improvement on the D3's chunky plastic guard.
- When viewing the dive profile (which is displayed on the screen as a graph), you can stop or speed up the replay at any point. The water temperature is graphed so that you can see how it changes with depth.
- The display can be backlit with green light: essential for when you are diving in murky water, or when doing naked statics in the pool at Long Island Breezes on the last night of Vertical Blue 2008...
Read more about Will and this blog entries at www.verticalblue.net/news
Diving image on the right by Frederic Buyle
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